Panetta? Are you kidding me?

Barack Obama has chosen clintonista Leon Panetta as his CIA director. Can anyone tell me why? Seriously. The Wall Street Journal writes;

The pick was unexpected because many of the names discussed for the job had been intelligence professionals. Mr. Panetta, whose background is in politics and government, has not worked for an intelligence agency.

With a war raging across the globe, do we really need a poltician with no intelligence experience running our intelligence service? A guy who is going to consider the political impact of every decision instead of the welfare of the nation and the American? And where's this damn change we were promised?

Of course, the Washington Post defends the choice;

In choosing Panetta, Obama, appears to have opted for a fresh start at an agency plagued by numerous scandals during the Bush tenure. Obama bypassed several candidates with CIA backgrounds for a politically savvy manager with personal ties to Obama and to Congress.

Officials familiar with the choice noted that Panetta, as Clinton's chief of staff, participated in the daily intelligence briefings in the Oval Office and had intimate knowledge of the interaction between the agency and the White House. Panetta also was a member of the Iraq Study Group.

"He has sufficient gravitas to ensure that CIA equities are going to be protected, and the agency continues to have a strong voice," said a former senior CIA official told of Obama's choice.

Isn't that dandy? He sat in on briefings eight years ago. Then I guess I'm qualified for a lot of stuff I know nothing about, because I've sat in on tons of briefings over the last 53 years. If he was going to be Agriculture Secretary, I'd expect him to have grown a plant at least once in his life. Why can't I expect the CIA director to have some intelligence experience.

Oh, and who was the guy apologizing for the Clinton Administration's pilfering of the famed FBI records? Um, Clinton chief-of-staff Panetta. Imagine the fun he can have with CIA files. Of course, it could have been worse. he could have named failed super spy Sandy Berger.